Junichi Inagaki -- Escape（エスケイプ）

 

I'm going to be finishing off my usual Friday night group of four entries of a City Pop nature with one of the princes of the genre: Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）. Whenever I listen to any of his arrangements, I often get that feeling of being in a bar of a metropolitan hotel nursing a drink or a sundae. 🍨

That's exactly the case with his fourth single "Escape" from March 1983. A song about a man who finds a woman's beauty so exquisite and blinding that he feels that he has to flee, I simply find myself in the old lobby of the Tokyo Prince Hotel. No woman that amazing there but the chairs are comfy.

The lyrics and arrangement were handled by Akira Inoue（井上鑑）while Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平） composed the basic melody. It sounds all very classy but with a fairly quick tempo and rhythm as if a convertible is needed to truly appreciate "Escape" while it's playing on the car stereo. "Escape" managed to peak at No. 19 on the Oricon weeklies and the song was also included in Inagaki's third album "J.I." from September. That album hit No. 2 and ended up as the 19th-ranked album for 1983.